Pin Ups in the Pacific - Da Big Babes 2x2 - Allies Only please

[vettim89]

9-15 February 1942

The Japanese continue there backfilling operations in Fiji, Samoa, the New Hebrides, and Louisianne (sp?) Archipeligo. No sightings of KB in the past week of game time. A Small LCU was landed at Koumac and has made its way to L FOa. I suspect Noumea will fall shortly. Japan is also hitting the islands around Nanumea. No further expansion south or east as of yet.

Japanese subs are off Auckland and SF. I have lost a couple of xAK off Aukland. Can't seem to do any damage to the ones off SF. Only 45 turns until USN ASW sees its first big upgrade. Hopefully this will help.

USN subs are guarding Midway and teh approaches to Hawaii. A few are around SUva and bewteen Pago Pago and the Marshalls. The S-Boats around the Celebes are buying sent back to Soerobaja as the Japanese have a toe hold in eastern Java. I don't want these boats caught out at sea with no where to go. I also have four fleet boats assisting Ken off Sumatra

Lark BTN has been extracted by PBY from Gasmata. Most of the NG troops are west of PM and slowly being pulled out also. Two BGD's of Americal have been bought out and am awaiting PP to build back up to grab the third before sending them to Tahiti. I know JWE is considering fixing this in a future Update of DBB. In RL, the first two BGD's of AMerical arrived in Oz on 25 January 1942. A Marine Raider BTN is at Christmas Island with some AAA units. I am sending a few more that way in the next few turns.

Lastly, two USN CV's are about 500 nm north of Tahiti with AO support. They will not move forward unless we see KB appear in the DEI. Otherwise the will head to Oz waiting an opportunity

[vettim89]

16-27 February 1942

I feel some what guilty for not posting but there is very little happening in our game right now. The biggest news on my side of the map is that Noumea fell to overland assault. Besides that, all we have seen is backfilling every dot hex in the Solomons, New Hebrides, Tonga Islands, Fiji, Samoa and of late NG and all the islands off the eastern tip of PNG. Same kind of activity in the Central and Southern PI.

I on the other hand have been quite busy with three FS about to arrive in NZ and eight more slowly making their way to OZ. With the upcoming turn of the month, I will finally be able to fill out My 2E BS and then deploy them forward. Tahiti and Christmas Island are painfully being built up. Various air groups have been witdrawn only after moving all the trained pilots out. We now have a small reserve of both fighter and bomber pilots. Almost all the troops are now out of PNG and the Port Moresby BGD has been reconstituted at Cairns. That little operation cost me some Catalina airframes from the Aussie pool as I had some Ops losses.

Ken has been very busy as most of the action is on his side of the map. I will let him update that part of the map with one exception

Today is my birthday (47 for you cretans that must know). While not a big fan of social media, I do have a Facebook page just to keep up with a few good friends who are now scattered across the country. So today I was inundated with birthday well wishes from quite a few people I barely remember if I remember them at all. What I must have missed was when I approved AE as a friend. I say this because I got a little present from the game today and I had to mention it to see if others have gotten a little something too.

Context: last turn Ken asked to borrow some B-17's from SWPAC to move to Sumatra. Our last recon had showed over 100 ships in Port at Singapore. A very small raid went in this turn (at night).

The stream of messages were as follows: CVL Shoho hit, flight deck penetrated and >>>>>>>>>>TADA!!!!! Happy Birthday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Nomad]

It appears that this game will fizzle out. Kitikama is not able to continue and his partner ( plus Tim and I )do not want to go through finding another Japanese player so we are calling it quits. So sorry all.

[vettim89]

sigh

[vicberg]

Well that's simple. How about I take over. I'm playing da big babes against Witpqs as the Japs. I'm at about the exact same spot you are right now. I haven't taken some of the big hits as the japanese naval wise, but my opponent did an all in on Clark, which is causing headaches right now and I'm regretting not doing a Mersing, so I'm in an attrite war in Singapore and Clark. It will take 2-4 weeks to collapse them both. No focus for me on Sopac because I sent KB down to support DEI (which got the KB dinged a bit...repairing)...Key spots in java are under my control. Sopac is coming....

No worries if you want to quit, but looks like you had a good game going.

[Nomad]

You would have to talk to PresterJohn.

[Nomad]

It appears that we will continue, I wonder how much vicberg has read of this AAR?

[BBfanboy]

I hope you do agree to continue - there is a lot of tension in the situation with Japan already in the Tonga Is. while not yet securing the DEI oil. The losses in surface ships have to be hurting him too - those SCTFs built around CAs can be soooo annoyingly effective!
Re: the AAR - does it matter if he has read it to this point? I haven't seen any recent grand strategy discussion that he could use and other than some clarity on your losses [most of which he would be able to estimate from his data] there are only some tactical moves you would have to change - e.g. the USN CV position and planned use.

[Nomad]

I don't know how much of a problem it would be, just wondering since he saw the posting here and answered here. If he read it, he will have a better idea about how many troops we have in Sumatra.

[vettim89]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

I hope you do agree to continue - there is a lot of tension in the situation with Japan already in the Tonga Is. while not yet securing the DEI oil. The losses in surface ships have to be hurting him too - those SCTFs built around CAs can be soooo annoyingly effective!
Re: the AAR - does it matter if he has read it to this point? I haven't seen any recent grand strategy discussion that he could use and other than some clarity on your losses [most of which he would be able to estimate from his data] there are only some tactical moves you would have to change - e.g. the USN CV position and planned use.

I would have to agree. I checked and the last info I gave as far as the location of the US CVTF is weeks old. Even then my reference was pretty vague. My only concern is that I did give info that Americal was heading south. That would be a juicy target for SCF intercept or carrier raid.

[Cap Mandrake]

Extract a promise of no deep south pacific carrier raids for 1 mos or just send them via a big dog leg

[vettim89]

Well we are continueing on with the Japanese team now being PestorJohn and Vicberg (the 3rd and 4th Japan players in our game). We have played quite a few turns since the new Imperial GH staff took over

28 Feb - 14 March 1942

Almost all the action is on Sumatra right now which I will allow Ken to comment on as well as a major Allied victory on 13 March up in China. The Japanese have continued to pound away at Bataan with two recent Deliberate Attacks reducing forts to 0 and reducing the Allied unit count by two.

Biggest action on my side of the map is the withdraw of the USAAC from Oz. The BG with A-24's and the PG with P-40E's have gone "poof". I am somewhat ambivalent about these units. Their true pathway is very hard to represent in the game. The pilots and ground crews arrived at Manila just prior to the outbreak of the war. Their airframes got diverted to Brisbane. The USAAC and USN extracted quite a few pilots and some mechanics from the PI before they fell but they never really found their planes. Their appearance and sudden disappearance is just a bit of slight of hand in my opinion. However, I did get the airframes and that helps a lot. The HI and WCUSA actually have a fighter defense now.

Meanwhile the USAAC will return to Oz soon as the II FIghter Command HQ will land at Sydney next turn. Two full Patrol Groups are nearing Oz also. The 13th AF (SoPac) FS are in NZ. Arranging some of the SoPac and CentPac air units now for forward deployment. Things are going to be tight for quite some time as Av Support is well below deployed strength everwhere except Oahu and WCUSA.

USS Hornet has arrived but has biplane DB on board - ewwwww. She will make her way to WCUSA while we wait for the pools to grow. Will have to carefully manage my VF/VMF for a few months here. Statistically the F4F-3 is a better plane but production of that model is now done. The low production rate for the -4 model will mean I will need to slowly replace the carrier VF's over several months. I am tempted to just keep the -3's on the CV's as long as possible; however, one bloody carrier battle and there may be no replacements for -3 losses and not enough -4's to upgrade. Going to take some time to get enough planes in the pool either way.

[Nomad]

Tim says I have to put something here, so here goes.

China: a big battle occurred at Changsha March 11, 1942
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ground combat at Changsha (82,52)

Japanese Deliberate attack

Attacking force 156542 troops, 1332 guns, 195 vehicles, Assault Value = 4737

Defending force 179655 troops, 824 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 4780

Japanese engineers reduce fortifications to 4

Japanese adjusted assault: 3331

Allied adjusted defense: 15085

Japanese assault odds: 1 to 4 (fort level 4)

Combat modifiers
Defender: terrain(+), forts(+), experience(-)
Attacker:

Japanese ground losses:
19893 casualties reported
Squads: 520 destroyed, 1016 disabled
Non Combat: 451 destroyed, 1405 disabled
Engineers: 47 destroyed, 163 disabled
Vehicles lost 31 (6 destroyed, 25 disabled)


Allied ground losses:
3311 casualties reported
Squads: 9 destroyed, 239 disabled
Non Combat: 11 destroyed, 191 disabled
Engineers: 1 destroyed, 6 disabled


Assaulting units:
15th Ind.Mixed Brigade
52nd Infantry Brigade
138th Infantry Regiment
1st Ind.Mixed Brigade
Shanghai SNLF
57th Infantry Brigade
12th Ind.Mixed Brigade
55th Infantry Brigade
2nd Ind Engineer Regiment
3rd Division
8th Ind Engineer Regiment
22nd Division
13th Ind.Mixed Brigade
7th Mongol Cavalry Division
6th Division
40th Division
17th Division
Kyuko Naval Guard Unit
70th Division
39th Division
35th Division
26th Engineer Regiment
14th Medium Field Artillery Regiment
52nd Ind.Mtn.Gun Battalion
15th Ind.Medium Field Artillery Regiment
2nd Ind. Mountain Gun Regiment
11th Army
1st Mortar Battalion
13th Army
4th Mortar Battalion
North China Area Army
1st Field Artillery Regiment
51st Ind.Mtn.Gun Battalion
8th Ind.Hvy.Art. Battalion

Defending units:
10th Chinese Corps
53rd Chinese Corps
37th Chinese Corps
20th Chinese Corps
88th Chinese Corps
94th Chinese Corps
21st Chinese Corps
99th Chinese Corps
87th Chinese Corps
72nd Chinese Corps
58th Chinese Corps
78th Chinese Corps
74th Chinese Corps
8th Chinese Corps
18th Chinese Corps
9th Prov Chinese Corps
26th Chinese Corps
5th Construction Regiment
27th Group Army
9th War Area
29th Group Army
20th Group Army
2nd Chinese Base Force
19th Group Army
30th Group Army
17th Chinese Base Force
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm sure that losing almost 20K troops hurts a bit. Tim and I both were surprised about this, they
had been conducting bombardment attacks for many days and they showed that they had at most 1:1 in
raw AV, and with the terrain bonus and certain forts, there was no way they were going to do much.

I'll take some pictures in the next couple of turns to show my disposition in China. Mostly I am
playing China to just not lose it.
============================================================================
Burma: I have evacuated most of the troops out of Burma to India. Most of the Burma troops are
ill equipped, ill led, ill trained, etc. With my heavy reinforcement of Sumatra I felt I couldn't do much
in Burma but lose troops that I might need to defend India.
============================================================================
India: Mostly deploying my meager units to build forts in the South and East coasts and some of the inland
bases. Most air units are on 100% training with few aircraft.
============================================================================
Sumatra: I have done some maneuvering and a bit of attacking. I defeated two armor units on the road South
of Padang. Last turn they moved back with the 38th Inf division, but it looks like the 38th took considerable
losses in the surface raid a month ago.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ground combat at 44,89

Japanese Bombardment attack

Attacking force 8858 troops, 82 guns, 29 vehicles, Assault Value = 366

Defending force 11231 troops, 81 guns, 88 vehicles, Assault Value = 390



Assaulting units:
38th Division
1st Tank Regiment
22nd Recon Regiment

Defending units:
2nd KNIL Regiment
44th Indian Brigade
Zuid KNIL Battalion
45th Indian Brigade


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We are in a Jungle hex, so I will get a bonus when they try to attack.

[vettim89]

One thing I failed to mention is the lack of exploitation by the Japanese of their early war gains in the SoPac. AT this point the only two bases that have been developed are Rabaul and Luganville. All those bases in the Tonga Islands, Fijis, and Samoa are at present the same AB/Port levels they were when taken. The only movment on this side of the map is the continued back filling. Most of the recent activity has been in the New Hebrides. The only ares not filled in now are the Santa Cruz Islands.

Of note there has not been occupation of Howland/Baker/Phoenix Islands. In fact a small TF just arrive at Canton Island and it appears it wasn't even overflown by search a/c. A similar supply run to Raratonga in the Cook Islands also went through completely unharrassed.

This at least gives the impression that there is very little in terms of defense by Japan in the SoPac. This may move up our time table as far as starting a counteroffensive.

[vettim89]

15-16 March 1942

Battaan fell to a Shock Attack on 16 March with all Allied units surrendering. Attached image shows our present score. With the month now waning, the thoughts turn to all the 4/42 upgrades. Various units including the US CV's are being maneuvered to allow for quick upgrades but also to keep them available for use if needed.

The IJN subs continue to be a pain sinking another TK and AKL on the 16th both near Tahiti. Trying to get some more units in place to help but progress is painfully slow.

[Nomad]

15-16 March 1942 on the Western side.

All American and British air units have been withdrawn from Sumatra. The replacement rate is too low and they have positioned about 300 fighters in the area. More than enough to cripple my air forces. The Dutch will have to continue alone.

I think I they have 5 divisions in Southern Sumatra. I have 2100+ AV in Palembang now, with level 5+ forts and the swamp terrain. The experience is mostly in the 35-55 range so we will have to see what happens. I do have two Indian divisions moved from Malaya and they have 42 infantry squads and some 25# artillery. It looks like it will take them 2-4 weeks to clear out the other bases and then concentrate on Palembang. I have more than 400 engineers there, I sure hope they do some facility destruction. I do have both a command and group HQ present in Palembang

Palembang:

[Nomad]

hummm, will have to redo

Well I messed up the second screenie, so here is Gene instead.

[vettim89]

Assuming Ken is correct and they will be tied up on Sumatra until at least the middle of April, that gives us some time to plan our next moves. The Japanese "Initial Operations Bonus" lasts the first four months of the war per the manual. We have interpreted that to mean December - January - February - March. I recall reading some AAR's as indicating they thought it extended through April. I would like some clarification on this matter if anyone knows for sure.

So with Palembang operations consuming at least five divisions now and one additional Division at Bataan, we only have four unaccounted unrestricted Japanese Divisions. Of course that does not address any additional units they may have bought off with PP's. Basically any move at a high value target would have to occur within two weeks. As such a move would likely be supported by the IJN CVTF which we know they are at or near Singapore now, that means it is unlikely we will see a deep strike at India, Oz, Ceylon, or NZ soon. With so much restructuring of the Japan side in our game, Ken and I are at a relative disadvantage at present. We really have no idea of what our opponents style is when normally you would have a fee by this point of the war. I will say since Vicberg took over, the Japanese air war over southern Sumatra became much more organized and effective.

As Ken just pointed out, we lack sufficient air frame building capability at this time to take the IJAF/IJNAF on in a prolonged battle at this point. I think this should be our guiding premise in developing short term plans. By that I mena we should not put ourselves in a position where we do not have a well developed rear to fall back on if/when things aren't going our way. That said, I do not want to just turn turtle and run away for six months. I think we need to keep the Japanese engaged at significant points to maintain pressure on their pilot and aircraft pools. So just to get this conversation started, here are some areas I think we can use fro such purposes.

1. China - yes I know supplies are limited but I think keeping at least a few units here will keep them honest

2. Bengal region - need to build up the AB's around Calcutta, east toward Ledo, and south toward Chittagong. I don't envision a full fledged air war here for some time but some commando style raids could be done to keep some pressure on the bad guys

3. NE Oz ---> PM. Need to build up Cairns, Portland Roads, Coen, etc to start applying pressure on PNG

4. Norfolk Island - Build this base to harass New Caledonia

5. Line Islands - defensive build up here taht could act as a spring board south or west

6. Cook Islands - need to build a string of strong bases here and trailing east to the Societies. Goald would be to eventuially move towards the Tonga Islands and eventually Fiji/Samoa

7. NW Oz. Here I am unsure. I would not be surprised to see them take Derby, Wyndham, Darwin, et a in the near future. Would not anticipate a full blown invasion but cannot rule that out. I am hesitant to put any high value units up here until I can be sure the threat of invasion is done

[Alfred]

vettim89,

Re the invasion bonus, look at this AAR (plus its mirror Japanese AAR)

tm.asp?m=2495125&mpage=5

See post #124 for the joyous cry from the Allied player when 1 May 1942 arrived.

Alfred

[Nomad]

This looks like Tim is talking about mostly air power at this time.

China - I do have one AVG squadron active now and I need to get the second one out of China and update its air craft. After the AVG has to withdraw, I am not sure what to do. I will be trying to ambush the Japanese where I can.

Bengal - I am building airfields as fast as I can and I will start some kind of air operation offensive in the near future, I need to wait for the 4 fighter squadrons that were withdrawn from Sumatra.

NE Oz - I think that Charter towers, Townville, and Cairns are the first on the priority list, then moving North.

NW OZ - I would not expend any resources at this time to build any of the Northern OZ bases. They are too vulnerable.

NZ - NZ needs to be built up and enormous stocks of fuel and supply sent there over the next 6 - 9 months. It can be the launching point for an attack either to retake New Caledonia, or possibly bypass New Caledonia and invade Luganville.

Cook, Society, and Marquesas Islands - Selected islands in these groups need to be occupied and built up for ASW operations, Naval search, Recon, and future launch points for retaking the Samoa and Tonga Island groups and Fiji.

A decision will have to be made in the near future exactly which path the USN/USA will take. But I feel retaking Luganville to Samoa will be necessary to secure a shorter supply route to NZ and OZ. But, there was a reason that the US waited until November 1943 to start their island hopping campaign, they needed a lot of assets and many of those were not ready until the second half of 1943. And that was with the Midway victory, which we most likely will not have. So we will need to select any invasions sites with care and hopefully when KB is busy on the West side of the map.

Invasion bonus ends March 31, 1942.